More than an ATM: How interdepartmental collaboration can strengthen your development strategy
I have often heard fundraising colleagues bemoan feeling like an ATM machine—when a program or executive leader conjures a new idea, they come to the fundraising team with their hand out for immediate funding, without regard for the broader fundraising strategy. And as fundraisers, our day-to-day activities can be so consuming that we only check in with our programming counterparts when we need information to complete a grant or report.
In both cases, we experience frustrations like not feeling valued or heard and feeling prevented from doing our best work. Moreover, the organization runs less effectively than it could. We are missing the opportunity to fulfill our mission at our highest potential. (For more on this, check out my coworker Jessica’s article on how fear—and overcoming those fears—impacts our work as fundraisers.)
As the connection point between these worlds of mission funding and mission work—and as professional relationship managers—we have the opportunity to courageously facilitate connectivity and collaboration between departments. Interdepartmental collaboration can be particularly challenging for development teams—but when we create opportunities for open communication and brainstorming across departments, we are all more effective in our work.
Gaining a deeper understanding of one another’s work, and sharing ideas to solve common pain points, can significantly improve the organization’s mission and strategic direction.
Claim common ground
As fundraisers, we play a unique role in the nonprofit sector: serving as an intermediary between the communities our organizations serve and the donors who support our organization’s work. This often requires negotiation skills to create value among a variety of stakeholders, and one of the key first steps is to claim common ground.
While I may not always use these exact words, I like to convey that money equals mission. Because of the funding the development team secures, the organization is able to serve its mission. But this isn’t a one-way street: Simultaneously, the organization’s mission and impact are crucial to the development team engaging donors to secure funding. It's important to acknowledge that it’s a symbiotic relationship that requires collaboration from multiple stakeholders within an organization, including program teams, Marketing & Communications, and Finance.
Strong relationships are built on a foundation of a shared purpose around the mission and that everyone is working toward that common cause to improve the community. From this starting point, even competing priorities can be acknowledged as important to advance the mission and raise money—as both cannot exist without the other—in order to establish a sense of shared purpose.
Play the role of convener
I liken intentional relationship-building across departments to donor relations: We know that it’s not a best practice to make a renewal ask of a donor without several relationship-building touchpoints. We should approach our colleagues in the same way and, instead of just periodically reaching out for information for a grant report or proposal due in short turnaround, cultivate those relationships intentionally.
1. Engage with your Programs team
We can often find ourselves removed from the service delivery as fundraisers. It is important that we periodically step back and see the forest from the trees—to reflect upon the reason we’re raising money (and it’s not to make our goal at the end of the fiscal year). Some effective ways to do this derive from establishing strong internal relationships with your programs team.
As a fundraiser leader, you’re well positioned to facilitate regular meetings with your program team. I have seen this take many different shapes. It can be as simple as an invitation to a team meeting to share updates to the more complex task force that has working sessions to integrate fundraising and program activities.
There may also be opportunities to get directly involved, e.g. on a ride-along, a shift at a service center, or a meeting with a community recipient of your services. However the engagement may be structured, it’s important to spend time discussing past and desired future impact. When you and your team have more information about the direction and vision, you can help guide conversations with donors in a way that leans upon the expertise of your program staff.
2. Interview your colleagues
We know how vital storytelling is to fundraising. A powerful mission story can engage a donor on a human level and help them visualize the potential impact of their investment in a way that simply cannot be achieved with metrics alone. (Check out this expert panel discussion on effective storytelling, hosted by Aperio in partnership with the NYU Heyman Center.)
Practice the same curiosity about personal experiences within your organization. In doing this, you’ll connect on a human level and understand where their work feels most impactful to them. Ask questions of your program team that go a step beyond the quantitative metrics and drive to their passions such as:
Why do they enjoy their work?
What are they most excited about in the next year?
What keeps them up at night worried?
You may start to notice some trends and uncover new opportunities and stories to share with your donors. It also provides an opportunity to spend time discussing what metrics are feasible and meaningful, and sharing insights you have about funders.
3. Calibrate your metrics to community needs
We miss opportunities when we shoehorn metrics into last-minute requests. Dialogue can help avoid situations in which the Development team conjures what it thinks would be suitable metrics to address donors’ interests. In fact though, those metrics—often actually outputs—don’t really get to the true impact and outcomes of the mission.
Engage with team members early and often to consider what metrics and stories can demonstrate your organization’s impact in the most compelling way. In doing so, you’ll avoid mission creep—and ensure the needs of communities you serve continue to be centered in your work.
4. Consider who else to bring to the table
Invite colleagues from your Marketing & Communications team to these program meetings as well. These teams often need the same information to develop their outreach plans. Open communication can help diminish feelings that the program team is being pulled in different directions by internal audiences. Strengthening ties between Development and Marketing & Communications provides more natural opportunities to share calendars and themes, which will ultimately strengthen donor engagement plans.
Developing a relationship with your organization’s Finance department is also critically important. There often are nuances that need to be considered when developing a budget for a proposal or report, and the vernacular that the two teams use may be different. Having more shared experiences and a chance to deepen the understanding of each team’s needs will assist when there is a tight deadline—or perhaps will help avoid working in a fire-drill position at all!
5. Maximize the value of your differences
Underlying all relationship-building efforts are the differences in personalities and communication styles. In interdepartmental relationships, it’s likely we will also encounter divergent priorities and perspectives on the work.
If your team doesn’t already have some shared language to talk about personality archetypes, consider these: True Colors, DiSC, Enneagrams, Myers-Briggs and Strengths Finders.
When we better understand our own tendencies and preferences, as well as those of others of our teams, we can leverage each individual’s strengths to expand our potential for impact. Equipping ourselves with different angles from which to understand one another gives us can also be helpful in navigating disagreement.
Work with intention
The very nature of fundraising lies in developing relationships. Taking the same principles that we approach our external work and applying them to internal relationships can have the same impact.
Building these internal relationships isn’t easy—and it won’t happen accidentally. Building deep and meaningful partnerships takes time and discipline. Having a vision of where you want to be and charting the path creates the best opportunity for success.
Evaluate where you think you and your team may be in the process. Perhaps you need to evaluate with whom you actually need to cultivate a relationship. Perhaps you know who but haven’t scheduled the first meeting. Or perhaps you have regularly scheduled meetings, but they’ve been canceled for the last several months and it’s time to recommit. Wherever you find yourself, what’s your next step? Set a deadline in the next three working days to complete it!
The most effective fundraising departments appear to those who assume good intent, establish open lines of communication with their colleagues outside of the department, have defined what information needs to be proactively shared, and have developed systems to sustain interdepartmental relationships.
Mike Stefanki
Mike Stefanski is Managing Director, Client Services at Aperio Philanthropy, where he leads Aperio’s partnerships with nonprofit organizations. He specializes in developing and implementing fundraising strategies, donor engagement, and corporate partnerships.
